Keene was a Victorian designer of costumes, props, mechanical effects and scenery for plays and pantomimes on the London stage, with a strong sense of wit and a special feeling for animals.
Keene seems to have avoided the developing market for terracotta drains, bricks or building materials, concentrating instead on mosaic-making and other artistic features.
In 1852 Keene changed direction completely and began working as a designer of sets and costumes for the London stage, notably for the celebrated Drury Lane Christmas pantomimes.
[5] He also superintended the ‘juvenile fêtes’ held at the Crystal Palace in 1858–9, when a monster plum pudding ‘outdoing in its dimensions a Great-Western turntable’ was displayed, with creatures dancing upon it.
He was involved in several ambitious archaeological reconstructions of scenery and costumes, such as the Egyptian drama Nitocris staged at Drury Lane in 1855, but they never brought him the success of the pantomimes.
In this case he appears to have disregarded the caution of Richard Fricke, his main adviser on staging the Ring, and insisted on a number of realistic mechanical props for scenes featuring mythical animals.
Yet Keene was commissioned, probably at short notice, to make not only the dragon but also a bear, a magpie and an ousel for Siegfried, a car with rams for Fricka in Die Walküre, and sacrificial beasts and a pair of ravens for Götterdämmerung.
By late July 1876, three weeks before the cycle began, only the car and parts of the dragon had arrived in Bayreuth, despite frequent visits by Dannreuther to Dykwynkyn's Clapham workshop.
Most of the missing parts turned up just in time, but Fafner's neck-joint arrived too late (a canard repeated by Ernest Newman claimed that it was sent to Beirut instead of Bayreuth).
Exotic pantomime props were unsuitable for Wagnerian mythic opera, as Richard Fricke had realized immediately the dragon arrived (‘Into the deepest junk room with the wretched thing!
In his final years, living at Hanbury Road, Battersea, close to his previous address, he was paralysed, bedridden, and relied on assistance from a theatrical charity.